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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22368025">Heart of My Own</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacerschoice/pseuds/spacerschoice'>spacerschoice</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Amnesiac Courier (Fallout), Angst, Betrayal, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Followers of the Apocalypse (Fallout), Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, NCR | New California Republic, Nonbinary Character, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, References to Addiction, Short Chapters, Slow Burn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:54:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,306</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22368025</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacerschoice/pseuds/spacerschoice</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A sheltered doctor for the Followers of the Apocalypse and a man with no name meet in a haze of blood and bullets five years after Courier Six secures a victory for the NCR at Hoover Dam. Chaos ensues.</p><p>A story of pain, healing, and second chances in the Mojave Desert.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Vulpes Inculta/Original Character(s), Vulpes Inculta/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Something There to Remind Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As long as humans have walked the earth, there have been healers walking with them. Men and women dedicated to saving lives and welcoming new ones into the world. Even now, centuries after nuclear fire consumed the earth, sending humanity back to the stone age, such healers braved the radiation, feral raiders, and plethora of mutated abominations that plagued the wasteland, just to save the lives of their fellow humans (and ghouls).</p><p>As a girl who had been raised on stories from ghoulified gunslingers of fearless combat medics who charged head first into battle and traveling doctors who trudged through the heat of the West Coast, going from settlement to settlement, helping anyone who needed it, Cannenta Duke spent most of her youth fantasizing about the day she would join the ranks of the heroes she had heard about all her life.</p><p>Over a decade later, as she stared at the blinking cursor of her terminal, the girl, now a woman and a doctor in her own right, sat, nursing a headache and wondering what went wrong along the way. A large, alphabetically organized stack of patient files waiting to be input into the official system of the Mojave chapter of the Followers of the Apocalypse was piled high on her left. On her right, an admittedly pitiful stack of the work she <em>had</em> completed sat <em>just</em> within the lens of her peripheral vision, only encouraging the doctor’s small crisis. Removing her thick framed eyeglasses and setting them gently on the scuffed metal of her desk, she rubbed her eyes, her hands slowly moving to her temples.</p><p>“Got another migraine?”</p><p>Cannenta jumped and spun her chair in the direction of the source of the voice, making herself dizzy and worsening her headache. After regaining her composure and putting her glasses back on, she saw Courier Six: Follower through charity, savior of the Mojave, and, as was probably evident by now, collector of ridiculous nicknames.</p><p>“Don’t <em>do</em> that! You could’ve given me a heart attack!”</p><p>Six simply shrugged their shoulders.</p><p>“Sorry,” they said, not sounding very sorry at all “Force of habit, I guess.”</p><p>A short silence began to fill the room, almost reaching an uncomfortable length until Six broke it.</p><p>“You didn’t answer my question, though.”</p><p>The doctor sighed.</p><p>“It’s not a migraine. Not yet, at least. It’s getting there though.”</p><p>“How do you know?”</p><p>“Oh, just my doctor’s intuition. It’s never wrong, you know.”</p><p>Six let out a laugh at her comment, and although slightly muffled due to the ranger helmet covering their face, it was refreshing. She didn’t hear much laughter in the Fort nowadays. Or ever, come to think of it. Cannenta gave a small smile of her own.</p><p>“<em>Doctor’s intuition</em>? Oh, c'mon, Nenta, now you're starting to sound like Arcade!”</p><p>“What can I say? Great minds think alike.”</p><p>“Oh really?” Six replied, in a tone that led the doctor to think that, could she see their face, the infamous courier would be raising a teasing eyebrow. “I figured it was more of a monkeys and keyboards kind of thing.”</p><p>“Well, you’d be wrong. It’s not <em>my</em> fault that you’re simply... <em>uneducated</em> in the ways of medical scholars like Dr. Gannon and myself,” she stated, turning up her nose and putting on the accent of the residents and staff of the Ultra Luxe she had met on her few visits to the New Vegas Strip.</p><p>“Yeah, sure, whatever.”</p><p>Before the pair could fall victim to another stretch of silence, Cannenta quickly changed the subject.</p><p>“Not to sound like I’m kicking you <em>out</em> or anything, but, um, why are you here?”</p><p>“Oh yeah! I’m here to… um… damn… what <em>was</em> I here to do? I know it was… <em>semi</em>-important.” Six then trailed off in a sequence of incoherent muttering as they gestured with their hands, waving them and snapping their fingers, no doubt racking their brain to figure out what exactly it was that had brought them into the young doctor’s office.</p><p>The woman frowned slightly at the masked courier standing in her doorway. She didn’t need a degree to know that getting shot twice at point blank range wasn’t exactly the best for anyone’s memory, even the seemingly indestructible Courier Six. Her frown wasn’t one of pity, but of empathy. There were very few people living on earth that had been through what the courier had in such a short period of time.</p><p>Cannenta began opening her mouth to speak when a Followers guard she could never seem to remember the name of burst into her office, putting an end to Six’s episode of frustration.</p><p>“Doctor Duke,” The guard said, breathing heavily. “We have an emergency.”</p><p>Courier Six’s head shot up, looking at the guard, and then at the doctor.</p><p>“Oh yeah!” They exclaimed. “<em>That’s</em> what I needed to tell you. By the way, there’s an emergency!” Six said as they let out an awkward chuckle, rubbing the back of their neck.</p><p>The guard looked at Six in slight disbelief for a split second, most likely wondering how they had been the one to save the Mojave. Then, he turned around and addressed the doctor.</p><p>"Semi-important, right?" The doctor joked, her eyebrow raised.</p><p>“Tent 3, bed 7. Wish I could tell you more, but I don’t know much else.”</p><p>The doctor nodded, and as she rose, the guard turned and left the small office.</p><p>“A true doctor’s work is never done, I suppose,” she hummed as she stretched her legs, stiff after she had been sitting down for most of the day.</p><p>When crises arose (which was often, given that the Old Mormon Fort had essentially become a fully fledged hospital after the NCR took control of Hoover Dam and sent what was left of the Legion running back east), there was little time for Cannenta to think. The woman was on autopilot mode, quickly grabbing what she almost always ended up needing during emergencies, despite the abundance of medical supplies already in the “operating rooms”: her stethoscope, a pen, and her pre-war leather doctor’s bag that always smelled faintly of floral perfume, despite the woman never having owned such a luxury in her life. She slipped her lab coat on, as bright white and pristine as the day she had gotten it at graduation, with “DR. C. DUKE” carefully embroidered in bold, black letters on its left breast pocket.</p><p>As her and Six began to leave the office, Six going to the right and she to the left, she put a hand on their shoulder and handed them a stack of index cards she had swiped at the last minute from an open drawer at her desk.</p><p>“Here,” she said. “If you’re worried about losing something, just write it down.”</p><p>“Thanks, Nenta.”</p><p>Cannenta gave a quick smile before turning on the heels of her boots and heading towards the exit of the larger complex in which various doctors had their offices.</p><p>“Have fun saving lives, doc!” Six shouted from down the hallway.</p><p>"I always do!" She called back, no doubt aggravating her colleagues.</p><p>Exiting the complex with the necessary items in hand, the doctor began to jog towards the large tent used for serious medical emergencies. When she reached the tent’s entrance, she took a deep breath before entering.</p><p>
  <em>“Another day, another crisis."</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Here In Death Valley</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Cannenta entered tent 3, one of the many makeshift emergency rooms scattered within the walls of the Old Mormon Fort, there was little time to gauge just how bad things really were. </p><p>Emergencies were nothing new, and she doubted they ever would be, but her heart still raced as she walked with a purpose towards one of the beds, dodging countless staff members. She couldn’t see the number hung on the footboard from her distance, but judging by the crowd of nurses swarmed around it, she safely assumed that that was the bed 7, where she had to go to save some unlucky wastelander’s life.</p><p>They couldn’t really be classified as tents, she didn’t think. They were huge, for starters, with hallways and large entrances. There were no actual rooms, but the Followers made due with curtains scavenged from all around the wasteland. Curtains from pre war-hospitals and motels and houses. All of them had history, something that the doctor believed added to the little charm a trauma center could have. The tents always reminded her of the beehives she would read about in pre-war books, constantly buzzing and alive with workers dedicated to the survival of the colony. The chaos was, in its own way, comforting. In the tan, canvas walls and constant noise of the tents, the outside world didn’t exist. There was no Legion, no NCR, just sick people that needed help, and that was okay with Cannenta.</p><p>As she was trying to squeeze through the team surrounding her newest patient, one of the nurses approached her with a clipboard of her own, trying to clear the way for the doctor and brief her on what the damage was.</p><p>“Patient is male, no ID, looks to be about 173 centimeters, unknown blood type.”</p><p>The Followers got more John and Jane Doe’s than anything, complete unknowns drifting in from all walks of life with injuries and illnesses of varying severity. Overdoses, muggings, dehydration. You name it, the Followers have seen it. It didn’t surprise Cannenta in the slightest that there was another anonymous patient that needed treatment.</p><p>“How about his vitals?”</p><p>“Pulse is high, 75 beats per minute, weak, and it just keeps rising. Blood pressure is low, 83 over 58. His temperature dropped by two degrees since we got him here, he’s at 96.6.” </p><p>“And why’s he here?”</p><p>“Gunshot wound. It passed clean through him, but severed his femoral artery.”</p><p>The pair had finally arrived at the mystery man’s bedside, with the nurse commanding her colleagues to move out of the doctor’s way. </p><p>“Doctor Duke is here! Make way!”</p><p>Cannenta sent her grateful look and half smile before turning to her patient and getting to work.</p><p>Severed arteries were never easy to treat. Not that any trauma injury that made it her way was, but damage to the arteries was tricky, and even though they had all been through field training, there was always enough blood to question the resolve of even the largest of bleeding hearts. In times like this, it was, quite literally, do or die, and there was little time to back out or second guess yourself when things got as ugly as they tended to get. </p><p>“How long has he been here?” Cannenta questioned as she briefly examined the wound. </p><p>“Just twenty minutes, Doc.”</p><p>The nurse had been right, there were clear entry and exit wounds, which would make her job much, much easier. The damage to the artery wasn’t as bad as the doctor had anticipated, which she was thankful for. While the excessive amounts of blood would suggest otherwise, there was only a small hole in the artery.</p><p>“The hole is small enough that we can suture it. We won’t need the whole trauma team, but we will need some blood packs. O-negative. Three would be ideal, but we can make do with two,” Cannenta explained as she washed her hands, and one of the nurses not preparing to put the doctor’s gloves and surgical mask on her gave a quick nod before ducking behind the bedside’s curtains and scrambling to one of the many large refrigerators for blood packs. </p><p>“I’m going to need a needle, thread, tweezers, scissors, and tissue forceps.”</p><p>Finally equipped with the proper hygienic attire, the doctor began to do what she did best.</p><p>As she carefully removed the needle and the thread it was attached to from it’s sterile packaging, Cannenta briefly wished she had splurged on a proper needle holder the last time she had been at Merchant’s Row.  </p><p>She decided to do a simple interrupted suture, one secure but not insanely complicated, as the damage didn’t seem to be bad enough to warrant a whole team of trained doctors to treat.</p><p>Cannenta and the nurses worked like a well oiled machine. While the doctor performed her procedure, one of the nurses was holding the tissue forceps and keeping the area around the wound open, another setting up the John Doe’s blood pack, while the nurse that had given the doctor her briefing held an extra light at just the right angle. </p><p>Half an hour came and went by the time Cannenta and her team had finished. The artery was sutured along with the skin around it. As she finished wrapping bandages around the man’s torso (which was excessive, she knew, but, as her mother always told her, there’s no such thing as “too safe” in the wasteland), the tension in the air around the bedside dissipated as the small team gave a sigh of relief. The hard part - all the work on their end - was over. Now, all they could do was wait for the man to wake up.</p><p>Looking at the clock and seeing that it was only a few minutes past 8 o’clock, the doctor realized just how much of the day she had spent absentmindedly staring at the screen of her terminal and actively avoiding doing work. While it was an unstated rule of the various medical staff that they could be called on at any time to clock in for the day, Cannenta’s official work hours ended exactly at 8. The woman turned back to the nurses.</p><p>“Think we could count this as overtime?”</p><p>The nurses all gave tired smiles and small huffs of air that served as a kind of sleep deprived laughter. </p><p>“We’ve tried that, but if you can get it to work, then all the power to ya’.”</p><p>Now it was Cannenta’s turn to smile and huff. It seemed that everyone around the Fort, researchers included, hadn’t been anything but tired for the longest time. Things had been slowly but surely getting better in the five years since the NCR took control of the Mojave, but the Followers would certainly never be out of a job. </p><p>“Working the graveyard shift?” The doctor asked.</p><p>One of the nurses sighed and rolled her eyes in faux-exasperation.</p><p>“Unfortunately,” she said, followed by an over dramatic sigh.</p><p>Cannenta smiled and nodded as she gathered her things and parted the curtains to leave. Halfway out in the hallway, she turned to address the trio of nurses.</p><p>“Call me if he wakes up. Sarah has my number,” the doctor said, referring to one of the overworked receptionists of tent 3. </p><p>After receiving a nod of confirmation, Cannenta left the curtained area of the John Doe, and then tent 3 itself. She took a deep breath of fresh air as she left the tent and began walking towards the large wooden gate of the Old Mormon Fort. </p><p>Freeside had a distinct scent to it that she could never quite place. There was the constant underlying smell of cigarettes and alcohol, but that was to be expected. If she was blind though, Cannenta could navigate the city by smell alone. The short walk north from the Fort to her apartment complex always smelled of cinnamon, while the walk south to the adjacent complex always smelled like broc flowers. Merchant’s Row, a collection of shops gathered in the hollowed, bombed out buildings of the city’s west side, was a roulette wheel of smells. Foods, spices, perfumes, cleaning products - anything you ever needed could be found there. Mick and Ralph’s, the place to go for black market goods, had an iron scent so strong it made your mouth taste like blood. Every part of Freeside was riddled with stories and character, with Cannenta’s apartment complex being no different.</p><p>The building had once been home to multiple businesses, all with small apartments of their own above them. A few of said businesses had started to make a comeback, like the one Cannenta lived on top of. </p><p>She lived above what had once been a cafe, now converted into a barber shop / salon combo, with the barber shop being run by the King’s personal stylist, Sergio, and the salon by a blonde woman from New Reno named Teresa. The place, simply called “Undercut”, took up two business places and as such, two apartments. Sergio still resided at the King’s School of Impersonation, while Teresa took the apartment above the barber shop, leaving a vacancy that the doctor was all too eager to fill.</p><p>As Cannenta climbed the rusted fire escape to her apartment, she wondered what Freeside had been like before the war. Probably not nearly as interesting.</p><p>After entering her small apartment and locking the window behind her, Cannenta began her nightly routine: eat, shower, sleep. (Not always in that order.)</p><p>Throwing her doctor’s bag and lab coat down on the rarely used couch, the doctor trudged towards her fridge, hoping that she had enough leftovers to hold her over for the night. She, like most who grew up in the wasteland, was not a picky eater. She could afford to be, now that she had a job of her own and nobody but herself to support, but after a childhood of eating anything her parents would put in front of her like it was her last meal, she never could shake the habit. </p><p>It seemed that luck was on her side that night, as she found a small package wrapped in paper, containing some of Ruby’s famous radscorpion casserole, all the way from Primm. </p><p>Placing the casserole on a plate, grabbing a bottle of water and an apple, Cannenta ate quickly, not realizing just how hungry she really was. Free time wasn’t common in her profession, so she had learned quickly to eat what she could before duty called once again. </p><p>After finishing her meal, the satisfied doctor rose slowly from her seat at the shaky stool of the bar of her kitchen and stretched her arms high above her head, yawning loudly before shuffling off to the bathroom.</p><p>If there hadn’t been small things around to tell that someone was living there, it would be easy to assume that Cannenta’s apartment was empty, abandoned when the bombs dropped so many years ago. There were no pictures on the walls, no rugs - despite the floor being cold wood, no books, and no various trinkets that are expected to be scattered throughout a home. </p><p>It wasn’t that she didn’t want those things, it’s just that the woman had never gotten around to going out and actually buying them.</p><p>While in the shower, Cannenta continued her reflections on life, as one does. She wondered if she was ever going to have her moment. Where she left Freeside. Become a traveling doctor. Maybe even a gunslinger? After pausing for a second, she imagined that those dreams might happen a bit further down the line.</p><p>“Start with the small things, Nenta. Buy a painting or something,”</p><p>She put decorations second on her mental shopping list, right below real needle holder.</p><p>Satisfied with her shower contemplations, she finished washing herself and turned off the warm water, the coldness of the air hitting from all around her. She quickly got ready for bed, finally settling in to her warm blankets and plush pillows, the only things she never regretted splurging on.</p><p>Sleep had never come easy to Cannenta. Maybe it was from a childhood of constant paranoia, or a career that came with a never ending shift, but it took the woman a very long time to fall asleep. Most nights, she focused on the laughter and muffled conversations of the people of Freeside to keep herself from getting into existential matters when she was supposed to be resting. Tonight was no different. </p><p>Just as the doctor was drifting off into a much needed sleep, however, her phone rang.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>this chapter is kinda short and the ending is... weak, but it gets better, i swear</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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